


friends and strange places

by wafflelate



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen, 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Dimension Travel, Gen, POV Shěn Yuán | Shěn Qīngqiū, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 00:38:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20573582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate
Summary: This isn't how Shen Qingqiu expected the joint training field trip with Bai Zhan Peak to go.





	friends and strange places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asymptotical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asymptotical/gifts).

> I had a lot of fun writing this extremely niche crossover! Thanks for giving me the chance, and I promise I glanced at the word "spooky" when I sailed past it on my way towards fun character interaction.

"It's not a ghost or a demon," a girl says, almost apologetically. 

Now, in Shen Qingqiu's opinion there are several things wrong with this. 

First of all, and most concerning, there's a big giant beast rampaging through this pristine mountain lake, so definitely no young people should be here! All the disciples Shen Qingqiu had brought from Qing Jing Peak had been carefully hustled away under Ming Fan and Ning Yingying's watchful eyes, as was right and correct. The Bai Zhan Peak disciples, they have been significantly more troublesome... but they were all firmly terrified of their War God, the one and only Liu Qingge, and he had frightened them into scurrying down towards the foothills after the respectful and obedient Qing Jing group with promises to protect them. 

This girl, she looks like she might be old enough to enter the next Immortal Alliance Conference, but that was still much too young to be intruding on two Peak Lords confronting an unknown supernatural threat! 

"Then what is it?" Liu Qingge demands, without looking at her. One might think this was because Shen Qingqiu's shidi was rude, or focused on the non-ghost beast below, but Shen Qingqiu knew better. 

No, Liu Qingge averted his eyes because the second thing wrong with this girl was that she was definitely — very definitely! — not dressed right. Where were the robes? The flowing sleeves? The several layers? Shen Qingqiu can see her _toes_ and her _collarbone_ and underneath her much too modern coat what might even be a a skin-tight outfit! Obviously Shen Qingqiu has seen all this and more before, what with the internet and then Sha Hualing, but that was absolutely no excuse. 

"Scared," the girl says, "which you haven't been helping with." 

Shen Qingqiu shouldn't even keep looking at her, but the last thing that's wrong with her is that she's definitely not using any qi, none at all, even though like himself and Liu Qingge she's perched 30 feet in the air. Where Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge are perched on their respective swords, this girl, she's simply standing on the side of the mountain, on a sheer cliff face, and even with her clothes as described before hasn't given even one shiver that Shen Qingqiu has seen. 

If she were using qi, it would be obvious. Liu Qingge is using qi right now to keep the weather from affecting him and to stick to his sword and for a million other small things that are probably instinctual for a perfect, beautiful man like him, and Shen Qingqiu can feel that qi usage rolling off of him like seeing heat rise off of pavement in the summer. Especially the qi that's fighting gravity! 

But this girl, she's standing flat-footed on this cliff wall looking down at the monster splashing around in the lake below without even a whiff of power coming off her, which even demons can't do. It was as if she'd come here just to say: Fuck you, gravity! Fuck you, all laws of the universe! I'm here, I'm underdressed for both the weather and polite company, and nothing can stop me! 

"Scared," Liu Qingge repeats, with no sign as to if this is disbelieving or inquisitive. He really is just that stoic, just that majestic. So cool and unflustered, even if he does have to avert his eyes! 

"He was attacked and then sent here, a place he's never been," says the girl patiently. "You'd be scared too. Please stop making it worse." 

Liu Qingge doesn't reply to her. He just looks at Shen Qingqiu, like this should at _all_ be his decision. He doesn't know! He's never met this girl before! 

Shen Qingqiu snaps his fan open and raises his front of his face, because it's important to have the time and privacy to think. "That does sound unpleasant," Shen Qingqiu eventually settles on, because it really really does. 

Sure, the monster below is massive, and has completely ruined the aesthetic of the forest around this lake with wave after wave of punishing, fridged water that's knocked over several mu worth of old, tall evergreens. Sure, the monster below had a giant spiked and armored back and several long, spiked tails. Sure, the first sign that something was wrong had been a hallucination-inducing mist that had caused no little amount of trouble for Yang Yixuan. 

But Shen Qingqiu does know all about finding yourself in a strange new place against your will and being scared. It's terrible, very terrible. He would have given a lot just to have some nice strangers standing around worrying for him back then! 

He snaps his fan closed and taps it against his lips as he turns back to the girl. "What do you think we should do? There's a village near here, it can't simply keep thrashing around as it likes." 

"Do you know anyone who can..." The girl stops and her brows furrow, her eyes flicking across the both of them. "I don't know what you'd call it," she admits. "There's a sort of... fold in space in its mind. I need to go there. To speak to it." 

"Yes," Shen Qingqiu says immediately. 

"No," Liu Qingge says at the same time, extremely forcefully, as if he could will it to be so. 

Shen Qingqiu sends him a cool look and takes out the alert talisman Luo Binghe had absolutely insisted he wear. This must be a recycled wife plot after all, and really shoving the whole thing off on Luo Binghe and his OP plot armor would be much safer for everyone! Shen Qingqiu breaks the talisman without further discussion. Liu Qingge and Luo Binghe need to learn to get along eventually. 

Predictably, the fragmented pieces of the talisman haven't even dropped all the way to the ground before Luo Binghe is there in a flood of power, Xin Mo in his hand with its new and improved seals fluttering in the false wind given off by Luo Binghe's power. His eyes burn already, skipping over Liu Qingge and the girl completely to rake up and down Shen Qingqiu's body a few times, checking for injury. Finding none, he turns to the most obvious threat and says of the beast in the lake, "Ah, Shizun, this disciple will take care of it for you." 

The girl shifts, a slight bend of the knees that clearly would prepare her to leap off the cliff face and straight at Binghe, as if that wouldn't be suicide! She says, "Isobu is my friend. I won't allow you to hurt him." 

Luo Binghe looks at her finally, but not with any interest. Ah, another wife plot, ruined! "If it's threatened Shizun—" 

"It hasn't," Shen Qingqiu interrupts, and taps Luo Binghe's shoulder in a quick reprimand. Assuming such things! "I've been perfectly safe, and she says her friend is just scared. I don't see why we should jump to killing anything that doesn't need it. She needs help." 

Luo Binghe looks somewhat skeptical about this, but at Shen Qingqiu's bidding patiently listens to a longer explanation about what the girl needs — entrance into a fold in space-time connected to some curse the beast is under, a space ruled by mental discipline. Luo Binghe seems to follow exactly what she's talking about, and soon they're all rushing down to the lake. 

At the shore, Shen Qingqiu is asked to use his fans to blow the majority of the hallucinogenic mist off the lake, and that distracts him from trying to figure out how to get the girl across the lake without an extra sword (or indeed any qi on her part to fly such a thing!) until well after she's stepped onto the very surface of the lake as if it were solid ground. 

Shen Qingqiu is beginning to wonder if _she's_ the ghost. 

"You stay out here," Luo Binghe says to Liu Qingge, and then without waiting for a reply he gets things moving. 

First he puts on hand on the girl's shoulder. 

Then, slips his other hand down to hold Shen Qingqiu's hand like they're young and embarrassing sweethearts. 

Finally, the world twists and pulls. When it stops, they're still in front of the beast but definitely not on the lake anymore. Liu QIngge is gone, probably fuming to himself and dodging several large, spiked limbs. 

"Isobu," calls the girl. "**Hold still!**" 

The very land they're standing on seems to shake with her command. Isobu the beast stills, and Shen Qingqiu sees that it's chained with an almost uncountable number of chains. On top of its back, shrouded in darkness, a red-eyed figure stands. 

"We have to break the chains," says the girl. "Then we can do introductions." She takes a sword made of light out of thin air and starts forward for the nearest chain. 

Shen Qingqiu looks at Luo Binghe. 

Luo Binghe says, "He's not real," with a gesture towards the ominous figure standing on the monster's back. 

Well, in that case, there's really nothing to do but follow the girl's instructions. The floor here is either solid or nonexistent, much like being in Luo Binghe's dreamscape, so Shen Qingqiu steps down and takes Xiu Ya in hand. Attacking chains with his sword sounds much easier than attacking a giant monster, at the very least, and it will be quick work with Luo Binghe here! 


End file.
